


Renadion the Woodsman

by Garbidge



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, F/F, F/M, High Fantasy, Human, Magic, Orcs, Romance, Transformation, Transgender, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-27 21:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30129129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garbidge/pseuds/Garbidge
Summary: This is an idea that's been whirling around in my head for some time and I wanted to put it down to paper, so to speak, so it wouldn't escape me and I could develop it into a cohesive story. It boils down to an excuse for magical TG transformation and human x orc love. There is occasional graphic violence and persistent sexual innuendo, as well as a lesbian sex scene. If the sex scene is all you're in it for, it's currently at the end of chapter 3.The draft is very rough and nowhere near finished, and subject to massive revision and expansion to correct the doubtless myriad narrative disconnects that accompany my slapdash and non-chronological method of writing. I am opening comments so that any such discrepancies can be pointed out and amended. Additionally, I would appreciate suggestions for expanding the roster of characters and further developing the ones I've already made.For the love of God, please do not read this if you've already read my shamelessly self-indulgent Star Wars fanfic.





	1. Chapter 1

“Pay attention, Renadion,” Fennagon said to his son, sitting on the stool in his cottage’s workshop.  
“Yes, father,” Ren weakly replied to the sickly man, holding back tears.  
“Soon I will join your mother in Eternity, and the keeping of the Endless Groves of Mellar-hone will fall to you and your heirs,” he said between coughs. “You’ve been a good son, and a good steward of the forest. You have learnt the dual arts of woodcutting and conservation. And I want to see you wed before I take leave of this world, and leave you secure the trade of your forefathers and foremothers.”  
“Please don’t talk like that, father,” Ren tried to mollify him, pretending as if the illness which had wracked Fennagon’s lungs for months would subside.  
“It happens to us all Renadion, and if you take nothing else from my raising you, take heed of this above all: never, ever let unshriven souls trod upon the ruins of Mellar-hone. The threshold of Our Creator is no longer for the contemplation of men. Let no magic pass into the grove, and none will pass out.”  
Ren never quite understood what his father meant, but he took his words to heart. Three days after Ren’s marriage to his childhood sweetheart Arinea, Fennagon, the Woodsman of Ardenvale, died.

Renadion was the Woodsman of Ardenvale, a small village in the center of the great western continent of Mellar-hone. One of a number of similar towns nestled in a large idyllic valley in the peaceful kingdom of Ardaria at the edge of the Endless Groves that stretched beyond the mountains, Renadion’s life in Ardenvale was the picture of simple, rustic domesticity, with his wife Arinea and son Thair. Her family was one of means, and provided for their household what Ren’s bow, axe, and saw could not.   
“Woodsman of Ardenvale” was a lofty, self-effacing title for what amounted to a journeyman carpenter. He hewed trees, clearing the forest for farmers and ranchers, provided lumber for construction, and worked wood into furniture and small trinkets for sale to his neighbors and travelling merchants. For nearly three years after his father’s death, he had kept true to his father’s instructions. During his whole life, even when apprenticed to his father, he’d only taken from the forest what lumber he’d needed, never felling any more trees than was necessary, and replanting what shoots and saplings he could when it would not encroach on the farmers’ fields or the rancher’s pastures. Not that the great forest of Mellar-hone – the so-called Endless Groves – had great need of preservation, for it was so vast it had never been successfully charted by royal or imperial surveys. And he never let any “heathen” pass into the moss and vine-covered ruins hidden amongst the wooded slopes of the valley’s foothills.  
Of course, he wasn’t really concerned about the cryptic warning his father had given. Elves, orcs, faoladhs, and other non-humans rarely ventured this far west, and he doubted the aging stones of the ancient edifice would have a more adverse reaction to their footfalls than they had when he bounded across them in his childhood, exploring them with Arinea, Vanis, Gehrig, and the other boys and girls his age. No, the great problems of the world never troubled the depths of Ardaria. Adventure was for the big cities of eastern Mellar-hone, or Greater Hallth.  
This and other things Renadion contemplated at the edge of the sylvan glade a mile from his cottage, dozing in the slightly dimming light of the early hours of the summer evening of the third and twentieth year of his life. He sighed wistfully as he dwelt upon the fantastical tales of heroism, danger, and romance he grew up listening his parents read to him throughout his childhood, and which he struggled very hard to learn to read himself.   
“Ren,” he heard Arinea’s voice carry into the woods. “Dinner’s almost ready!”  
He stood up, brushing his tawny hair away from his eyes and turning to peek through the trees at the edge of his private retreat. He always came here at the end of a day’s work to be alone and sink himself deep in thought. He could see Arinea already nearly halfway across the field, carrying Thair. The boy was a little over two years old, and just beginning to walk without assistance, but he’d obviously been tuckered out after the first few hundred yards, and was already fast asleep in her arms.  
“Be right there,” Ren yelled back at her, grabbing his axe and bow and stumbling out of the forest to show her that she wouldn’t have to walk all the way into his personal glen to wake him up again. He waved at her to start walking back to the house, and ran to meet her before she entered the kitchen to serve dinner so he could give his wife a tender kiss and gaze upon the face of his sleeping son.

“Hello there, stranger,” a raspy voice blurted out loudly in the forest, startling Renadion as he bathed in the stream cutting through the meadow where he came to be alone.  
He spun around, his arms flying to cover himself and see what impertinent individual had broken him out of his reverie of dragons and castles and wizards. His bright green eyes glared at the intruder with sheepish amazement; a hunchbacked old crone, garbed in tattered grey rags and bearing a walking stick as gnarled and twisted as her body.  
“Wh-wh-what do you w-w-want,” he asked her impatiently, shivering as he stood shamefaced and naked in the cold air, creeping slowly towards the tree on whose branches his clothes were hung.  
“My my, a handsome young lad like yourself has nothing to be embarrassed about with a body like that,” the hag mentioned flatteringly, leering at Renadion’s lean chiseled body, and beardless chin. The already blushing cheeks on his boyish face grew even redder. “My name is Gethzon. I’ve been travelling the road for many days, and stopped at the stream for a gulp of water to wet my parched tongue. I was hoping you might spare a hungry old woman a crust of bread and point her to a cave to rest her bones out of the cold for a night.”  
Ren was just pulling up his trousers behind the trunk of the tree, and was nearly about to tell the biddy off for her ribald impropriety as well as disturbing his daydreaming, but suddenly remembered a story his parents had told him about a prince who was turned into a beast for refusing a simple kindness to a seemingly harmless old woman who was secretly a beautiful enchantress in disguise.   
“Of course,” he offered, nobly handing over the bread, cheese, and cold meat his wife had packed for his lunch while he dressed. “I apologize for my rudeness, Madame Gethzon, you just startled me, is all,” he said with a laugh.  
He stared intently as she daintily picked at the victuals he had given to her; like a princess, he thought.  
“I can tell what you’re thinking, my courteous young friend. And you’re correct.”  
He gaped at the crone as she smiled sardonically at him. In amazement he watched as she pointed at the ground a few feet away from her and twirled her hand, causing a fresh rosebud to peek out of the grass and bloom right before his eyes.   
“Pick it up,” she said, and he turned away from the elderly wretch to pluck it. “For your wife, Renadion” a new, trilling voice spoke, and Ren turned around to see in place of the squat decrepit bag that had accosted him, a tall, stunningly beautiful, raven-haired woman in an embroidered blue gown and a silver tiara. He knelt in abject awe and admiration, speechless at the transformation.   
“Now if you would be so kind as to provide Madame Gethzon some shelter, Renadion” she cooed plaintively.  
“There’s plenty of room in my cottage,” Ren proffered eagerly at the mention of the name he had not uttered in her presence.  
“Come now my Renadion, it would ill suit a gentleman to invite a lady into his wife’s home. I have heard there lie ruins of an ancient manor in this great wood. Such a structure would suit my needs.”  
“Oh, those…” he hesitated, remembering his father’s warning. “I’m not supposed to let anyone who’s touched magic cross the threshold of those ruins…”  
“My Renadion,” Gethzon spoke innocently, tenderly gripping Ren’s face in her hands and lifting him to his feet, “if you let me dwell there but for a few nights, I assure you, your dreams of adventure will come to pass. Mark my words, you will become a great knight.”   
At those words that tickled his hopes, Ren led her boldly into the forest, never seeing the malicious sneer that crossed her face as he invited her of his own free will beneath the stone arch that marked the 

Months had passed without incident. Gethzon had entered the dilapidated chateau, and nothing had happened. Renadion was quite sure his father was overzealous in his fervor to protect the Endless Groves. If anything, the old ruins of Mellar-hone had looked better off than they ever had before, as if a woman’s touch had tidied up the place. It was almost livable. It pained him a bit to break his word, but if no harm came to anybody, what of it? How many times had he been lectured on the importance of charity to The Creator? Well he had been charitable to a person in need, and was eagerly awaiting the just rewards that come from good deeds.  
It was nearing Thair’s third birthday when news of the itinerant tourneys came to town. Every few years, spectacular celebrities from near and far travelled through the great Adarian valley, exhibiting their prowess in jousts and feats of strength and skill, and tales of their exploits. Most of the time, this meant the regional nobles dusting off their unused armor to go on parade and bash each other on the helmets with their dull swords for the entertainment of the village’s families, or the local bards putting on plays; fairy tales for the children, tragic romances for the women, and ribald comedies for the men. If they were lucky, there’d be word of a new local hero, like the half-faoladh immigrant who had saved human children from a pack of wolves by speaking to them in the language of dogs, or the woman from the village of Nardon Hill at the other end of the valley who climbed a mountain to acquire a rare gem to set in a wedding band for her prospective husband.  
But this festival was different. The caravans for the royal tourneys were cozy and informal. This was a Grand Imperial Jubilee, heralded by a long train of roustabouts and fools and Imperial footmen. Renadion held Thair on his shoulders in the crowd with his wife and his old widowed friend Bart the blacksmith, watching the festivities. Arinea wore a rose in her hair, a rose that had not wilted though the months passed by. A great brass band blared a fanfare to the great storybook heroes from across the sea while a pair of sonorous dwarven bards mounted on boars cantering up and down the procession sung the declarations their patrons’ names and deeds.   
“Hearken ye to Sir Thaless the indomitable, Baron of Dolichor, Paladin of the Imperial Vanguard, Hound-lord of Greater Hallth, most loyal friend to all men, and mightiest champion in all the land,” the dwarven lady and gentleman rang out in unison, as a magnificently caparisoned knight rode down the highway on a gigantic white steed, covered in richly embroidered gold tabard, and flanked by legions of loyal squires and swooning ladies. His lance bore a blue and white pennon with the image of a yellow dog, standing upright.  
“Look Thair! It’s Sir Thaless, from the romances of Surblind,” Ren shouted to his son above the cheering masses, recounting the recently composed poems that had reached the bards in their part of the world.   
The knight was clad in polished steel armor, with a visored helmet in the shape of a dignified wolf. He lifted his visor, and to Ren’s great amazement, the shape of the man’s face fit the visor – Sir Thaless was a faoladh. The golden ornamentation matched the fur of his canine face, a wet nose capped the end of his long snout, and his tongue hung out of his mouth as he panted in the expression of a smile. He bayed great whooping exultations of the Emperor of Hallth and the benedictions he brought to the people of Ardaria, throwing handfuls of gold coins into the multitude. The songs that had reached Ardenvale apparently did not distinguish between “friend to all men” and “man’s best friend”.  
“Behold the Mystic of Elvendom, the Sage of Senyaro, Grandmaster of the Mages’ Guild, and the wisest man in all the world,” the male dwarf – who Renadion now recognized as Ciar Drollinghay, a famous barding ranger – ballyhooed with much overwrought intensity. Ciar finished the spiel with a rolling “Gaberroun the Great!”  
A serious-looking man with skin the color of rich chocolate riding a wagon and wearing a simple white and blue robe, in the habit of a clergyman, was gesticulating wildly with his hands, conjuring up flames and winds and lights and smoke and transforming them into images of history above his head to the oohs and aahs of the throng. He didn’t look like an elf, but like any other man. Darker-skinned than was typical for this part of the world, but nothing Ren hadn’t seen before. He wouldn’t let that apparent mundanity get in the way of his enjoyment of the spectacle before him.  
“Lamentation,” the female dwarf – obviously Ciar’s wife Cliona – wailed. “Lamentation for Felashi Burnt-hand, Mother of Ash! Shed your tears for the Lady of Pain, the Mistress of Misery, Chieftess of the Briar-boar Clan which is no more. Avert your gaze lest you invoke her wrath!”  
Renadion knew Cliona Drollinghay was overselling it, but the hushed whispers he’d heard spoken in Ardenvale’s tavern of the orc revenant that cut a swath through Greater Hallth in revenge for the slaying of her kin did not do justice to the real thing. Her black horse trotted slowly down the highway and the noise of the congregation dimmed to a dull roar. Her aspect was terrible; clad in crudely wrought black iron, rusting and jagged, stained with blood. An evil-looking hooked sword hung at her waist. Her olive-green skin peeked out through gaps in the armor. A great bearskin covered the left side of her body and she shifted it off, exposing her namesake, a horribly scarred left arm, charred from reaching into the pyre of her kin. Ladies covered their children’s eyes to protect them from the ghastly sight.   
Renadion did not cover Thair’s face; what they were looking at was not the grim object of horror before them, but the woman’s face. Two small tusks peeked upwards behind her scowling lower lip. The sides of her head were shaven in the orcish style, braided inky-black hair fell behind her scalp. And bright yellow eyes, almost reptilian; but in them no trace of ill-will or ire, only the crushing despair of unspeakable loss. As she rode past, Felashi’s eyes met Ren’s. Her sad, penetrating gaze bored deep into his soul. She looked at his son, and at Arinea, then back to him. Then she closed her eyes and turned her face as she rode on; Renadion could not miss the tears cascading down her face. He released a great sigh, filled with pity. Never before had he seen such a depressing sight.

The general furor over the new arrivals had died down after the first few days of jousting, acrobatics, and other assorted festivitiess. The esteemed guests from across the sea had taken up residence in the tavern inn, and were typically seen huddled in a large private booth. They had attracted quite a crowd of admirers at first, but the simple, practical folk of Ardenvale were easily entertained and satisfied by their tales of derring-do and feats in battle, and most were persuaded to leave them to their business by the late evening. All except Renadion who, though he rarely imbibed much drink, found excuses to lounge near the party of heroes and listen to them discuss matters beyond the ken of the common-folk. He felt that their coming was significant, a portent meant especially for him, sent by Gethzon to lead him into a bold and heroic enterprise.  
“You, human,” he heard an acid voice directed at him as he leaned out of his booth.  
Startled, falling to the floor, impressed by the towering form of the orc matron, Felashi.  
“Eavesdropping is a bad habit, human,” the seven-foot tower of green muscle and sinew glowered at him, more with frustration than anger.  
“I wasn’t-“  
“You were. Stop it. Their words are not meant for you.”  
He hung his head as he collected his things, and said, “I’ll leave.” Bowing his chastened head at her, he blurted out further, “I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be sorry, be gone,” she said impatiently.   
“No, I mean…I’m sorry for you. I saw the hurt in your eyes when you rode into town, and if even half the things they say about you are true…I can never imagine such agony.” Renadion looked up to meet the orcwoman’s eyes and beheld the same sadness. “I wish no one would have to suffer as much as you did.”  
“That is my pledge,” she muttered quietly. “My blade has spilt the blood of more than 600 curs who dared to separate father from son, husband from wife, mother from daughter, before The Creator saw fit, and its thirst has never been denied. Now be gone woodsman, and go home to your wife and child. The Mother of Ash will see to it that none will cleave the little father from his loved ones.”  
Try as he might, Renadion could not help himself from eavesdropping on the envoys of Hallth.  
“I tell you, she is here Sir Thaless! The Sorceress of Kern has resurfaced! Towerweald themself speaks to me in my dreams, the Unreborn wights wilt her leaves and wrinkle his roots,” Gaberroun spoke cryptically under his breath.  
“And how do you expect us to find her, my friend,” the faoladh growled, “the Endless Groves are inscrutable. We could search for a decade and never breach more than a mile into the ever-changing forest. Its enchantment is immeasurable and indefatigable.”  
“The forest must burn,” Felashi uttered. “Summon every man in the kingdom if you have to, it is better that the land die than risk all of Creation.”  
“Yer always talking aboot burnin’ things,” Ciar said. “It’d only make her speed up her plans.”  
“My husband didn’t abandon his life of ease and comfort to let all the wee bairns of Mellar-hone perish in fire, you of all lasses should understand that,” Cliona rebuked without a hint of sympathy.  
“If Zhadia crosses the threshold of Mellar-hone, burning will come one way or the other,” the black-skinned mage declared ruefully.   
At that, a chill ran down Renadion’s spine and his hair stood on edge. “Crosses the what!?” he yelled, jumping out of the curtained booth in the tavern.  
“I told the little father to stop eavesdropping,” Felashi spat with forced venom, as she rose to remove Ren from the private conversation physically. He ignored her, beginning to sweat with alarm.  
“What was this you said about a woman, and a threshold,” he implored, panicking.  
“Oh, it’s nothing you need concern yerself with, dearie,” Cliona said sweetly.  
“Why don’t I get the lad a leg of mutton and a pint of ale, relaxes the nerves ye know,” Ciar added with an air of paternal wisdom.  
Ren could hardly restrain himself. “Last year,” he began, “an old beggar-woman named Gethzon asked me to help her find shelter. Except she wasn’t a beggar-woman, she was a beautiful…I don’t know what, but I brought her to the ancient keep in the forest.”  
Gaberroun began to talk very slowly and calmly. “Gethzon you said?” Ren nodded. “You invited her of your own free-will into the tower of Mellar-hone?” He nodded again. He chose his next words very carefully. “And how did you know of this place?”  
“My father was the woodsman of this town, and he brought me there as I was growing up. He told me stories about never letting magic into the ruins, but I never gave them any credit because I went there with my friends all the time and –“ with a raise of his hand, Gaberroun silenced his raving.  
“Can you lead us there?”

Arinea woke up to a clatter in the cottage workshop. The moon was high in the black sky. She walked downstairs and ran into her husband, hastily pulling on a leather jerkin over his tunic and grabbing a large bearded axe that he only used for felling the toughest of trees.  
“Ren, what are you doing up this late?”  
“Arin, something terrible has happened, and I have to fix it,” he replied distressfully.  
“Ren, you’re not making sense, what’s going on?”  
“Arinea, listen to me very closely. There’s something horrible going on in the forest and it’s my fault. That’s why the Imperial Vanguard came here.”  
“What did you do, Ren?”  
“I can’t explain, just…Arinea, I might not come back.”  
“Don’t talk like that, you’re drunk-“  
“Arinea I’ve never been more clear-headed in my life. If I don’t come back, someone needs to take care of you and Thair. Bart’s been a friend of my family for years, he’s a blacksmith, he’s got money, and he’s a good man. He’ll look after you. Tell Thair his father loves him very much.”  
Renadion kissed his wife deeply, and Arinea watched as her husband ran off into the darkness with the company of the Imperial Vanguard.

Mist pervaded the wood. That was out of season. Thunder rolled down the valley. That was out of season. And it was unseasonably cold, prickling his spine. Everything was wrong. The vegetation surrounding the ruins where Renadion spent the idle hours of his youth was no longer lush and idyllic, but dry, creaking, brown, and forbidding. He pointed to a worn stone arch beneath the gnarled boughs of trees that were as fresh as spring not one month ago. The faoladh, orc, and dwarves passed under it. Gabberoun stood fixed in the path before it.   
“What are you waiting for, I thought you said this was important,” Ren complained nervously.  
“You must invite me across the threshold of your own free will. Magic is an abomination and barred from transgression on this sanctified ground.”  
“But you’re a wizard!”  
“Those are tricks. A flash of light, a peal of thunder, these are things accomplished as easily with chemicals or machines as with wizardry. Real magic changes the nature of nature itself. To change a man into an animal, to turn lead into gold, to create life where there is none, these things damage reality. Only The Creator can judge what is and is not.”  
Remembering the rose the enchantress had conjured out of nothing, Renadion beckoned Gaberroun across the portal.  
The Unreborn were beginning to coalesce out of the mists, hideous necromantic apparitions that were both material and immaterial. The celestial observatory atop the castle ruins sparked and broiled with ethereal energies. They moved lethargically, as if in a dream, but Renadion could see their ghastly faces, the images of the dead who had not yet passed into the world beyond. Thaless and Felashi cleaved at them with their swords, mangling their wispy bodies like wet clay, before Gaberroun could dispel them with his arts. Each burst of sorcerous energy that issued forth from the mage seemed to wrack him with pain, and as they scaled the Mellar-hone tower, the torchlit spiral staircase illuminated his cracked and bleeding palms. They creatures they faced not been all that powerful, as the ritual had only just gotten underway, but Ren could feel the strength being sapped from him all the same, as if he aged a decade every time he brought down his axe into an icon of decay.  
Pushing to the top of the tower exhausted them, but they steeled themselves as they pushed open the creaking wooden doors. Before them, a whirling maelstrom of indescribable energies flickered in and out of existence, warping the light around it. In a raised dais at the terrible epicenter of this veil of unnatural light, staff raised to the heavens and chanting unspeakable blasphemies no mortal was ever meant to hear, stood the enchantress Zhadia.  
“My Renadion,” the woman he knew as Gethzon spoke to him in a buzzing drone that seemed to bore directly into his skull. “If you wanted to become immortal, all you needed to do was ask!” and she cackled perversely as an unseen force threw him aside, landing in a bruised heap under cobwebbed bookshelves.  
“Your foulness ends here, witch,” Sir Thaless barked in defiance, raising his sword.  
“Stay back, my boy”, Ciar and Cliona said to Ren as they fired their arbalests at Zhadia, the quarrels penetrating the magical vortex but dissolving into nothingness before reaching their target as she focused the shield towards the oncoming threat.  
“You cannot stop me now, Gaberroun! I was queen of this world, and I will be queen of the world yet to come!”  
The black mage poured forth his will and concentration into the holy incantation to combat the dark sorceries of Zhadia, and the divine light that issued forth from his burning hands to seize her attention and weaken her resolve that one of his band might strike. But the Sorceress of Kern’s wights were emerging from the shadows and engaging his spent companions, if only – no.  
Renadion groaned as he pulled himself up. He could see the Unreborn gather around the beleaguered Imperials, and a breach in the eddy of sorcery revealed the cruel wild grin of Zhadia. He knew what he had to do. He gripped his axe in both hands and pressed forward into the winds of unCreation, the energies penetrating his body and abrading the very essence of his being as he crept up on the witch.  
Felashi spun as she swung her sword through a wight to witness the human and in anguished dread shouted, “Little Father, don’t-!”  
In a pang of terror, Zhadia turned and shrieked at the sight before her; Renadion smote her with his blade, and he knew no more. In a blinding flash the forces of Creation released their pent-up energy and shattered the roof of the tower in a stupendous explosion of wind and light, dissipating the mist and exposing the moonlit sky, and the green forest in the foothills of Mellar-hone.  
In the peaceful village of Ardenvale, the strange rolling storm that disappeared as fast as it had come brought instead of thunder the sound of despair, as the mournful wail of an orc pierced the heavens at its loss.  
“I’m sorry, milord, but I can find no trace of either the sorceress of Kern or the woodsman of Ardenvale,” Thaless spoke regretfully to Gaberroun. It was all he could do to repress the instinct to howl at the sky. “It appears Zhadia’s vile sorceries annihilated them both when he interrupted the ritual.”  
“So it seems,” the dark mystic replied pensively, not convinced.  
“The poor dears,” Cliona wept. “I’ll break the sad news to the missus, medarlin’,” Ciar consoled her. I’ll nae let you see the face of a peasant’s grief again.”   
Felashi Burnt-hand was inconsolable. Only once before had her blade been denied vengeance upon the architects of murder, when her own kin were slain. Her pledge, once inviolate, was now broken. She could not bear to look the widow of the Little-Father in the eye. When she saw the boy, she averted her eyes in shame and mounted her horse, abandoning the company of Sir Thaless to return to the land of her kin.


	2. Chapter 2

She was awake. She opened her eyes. She was curled up in a fetal position on an earthen mound in the middle of a swamp. It was raining. She was cold, and wet, and…naked. She tried to cover herself with her hands but quickly saw that her efforts were futile. She was…who was she? She couldn’t remember anything. It was as if her entire life before this moment had been a dream that had vanished upon waking.   
The woman staggered aimlessly through the morass, hoping to find some sign of habitation. It seemed like days before she saw a light through the darkness of the trees. She smelt smoke from a fire. She trundled onwards to espy a squat tiny cottage, its roof reaching scarcely above her own head. She brushed her brown, soaked hair out of her eyes and stooped down to knock on the door, hearing voices chattering from within.  
“Who the bloody hell could be knockin’ at our door in the middle of- GOD’S LIFE! Me prayers have been answered,” a funny-looking green-skinned man only three feet tall, with large floppy ears, a long nose, and a gigantic smile exclaimed when he opened the door.  
“What’s all the hubbub, Norbie, we’re trying to put the lil monsters ta bed,” a woman of similar mien stepped out behind the door. “Damn would ya look at the size o’ those tits!”  
The human woman blushed and reflexively covered herself, too stunned to speak. She wasn’t even sure if she could speak, she hadn’t tried yet.  
“Well don’t just stand there, get the hell in ‘ere, you’ll catch your bleedin’ death of cold out there,” the goblin ordered her inside. “Souv, fix ‘er up a spot of stew and I’ll put some blankets by the fire so she can dry off. Good old Norb’ll find you a spot to sleep.”  
“What’s yer name, pretty girl,” the goblin maid asked with a look in her eye just as lecherous as her companion’s, her hands full trying to calm down the absolute mob of unruly tiny goblin children swarming the spacious interior of the hut. They were clearly a fruitful race.  
“I…I…” she croaked out. “I don’t know,” the words finally came to her.  
“Well, I’ll find something ta call ya. I’m Souv, and this is my husband Norb. We don’t get many strangers in these parts, but we don’t let a guest starvin’ in the rain.”   
“If you need anything, Miss, just ask, and Norb’ll get it for ya,” he said with a wink, brushing aside the children that were trying to climb on the big pink creature that had just invaded their home.  
“Th-thank you.”  
It was some days before the nameless woman convinced the goblin homesteaders that she was not interested in sleeping with either of them, though that didn’t stop them from ogling her, which quickly sent them off to their quarters to engage in further multiplication of their species, leaving her with their rambunctious litter of children as company. She became far more comfortable with them climbing all over her and playing with her hair and pinching her skin after Souv had finally finished knitting her a simple smock to clothe herself with.  
“So, where did you say we were,” the woman asked her hosts.  
“Never said where ye was, Miss Tall Lady,” Norb responded absentmindedly.  
“I mean, could you tell me where this place is?”  
“It’s right ‘ere, innit,” he spurted out.  
“Shaddap Norb, she’s asking where in the world we’s located,” Souv reprimanded him, slapping the back of his head lightly.  
“Oooh, well in that case we’s must be somewheres in the ass-end of green country.”  
“Green country?” the woman queried.  
“Where us green folks live, ya know, orcs and goblins and lizards and suchlike.”  
The woman couldn’t understand why she asked but felt compelled to seek others of her kind.  
“Are there other humans around?”  
“Not around this marsh, and the nearest town is a day’s ride once you get out of the forest,” Souv intoned authoritatively, “and you’re in no condition to be mucking about this pisshole alone. Why, watcha looking for? A sweetheart maybe?” Both her and her husband’s big ears perked up at the thought.  
“I…don’t remember,” the woman said sadly, dashing the goblins’ hopes again.  
In return for food, clothing, and the carved-out cradle of stone that was large enough to sleep in, the “Tall Lady” dwelt in the goblin’s hovel for months, assisting them with chores both domestic and, by goblin standards, heroic. For small creatures hardly higher than a man’s waist and no heavier than a medium-sized dog, the sudden intrusion of a six-foot tall human maidservant into their house was a welcome relief from their hectic family life. She could reach twice as high as they could, carry twice as much, plow fields twice as hard, clean twice as fast, and tend to the little whelps twice as long while her hosts took a much-needed break from their offspring’s endless demands for attention in the pursuit of creating more offspring.  
It happened in the middle of autumn, when the days and nights started getting cooler, and the supply of fuel for the hearth was getting dangerously low. Norb always procrastinated when it came to hard work, and with the pack-goats as tired out as they were, the bogs were too far away to dig peat and haul it back to the house himself.  
“Cammon Miss Tall Lady, Norb needs your big strong arms to help gather firewood,” he crooned at her as flatteringly as possible. “You too Buggs, Ripper, and…Gee,” he grumbled at his eldest boys, struggling slightly to recollect which name belonged to whom.   
“Firewood,” she repeated thoughtfully, the word gripping her attention with some spark of significance for a moment before blinking away again.   
She went around the side of the house to gather the tools only to find them already placed in the goblins’ work cart by their outhouse. The Tall Lady effortlessly pulled the small cart and followed Norb and his sons into the swamp, where they came upon a shallow gully, filled with rotting logs and flanked on either side by broken, half-hewn young birches and ash trees. The diminutive green man each grabbed a hatchet out of the cart and started chopping randomly and half-heartedly at whichever thin trunk looked easiest to hack through. Something seemed familiar about all of this.  
“Well go on luv, grab a hatchet and git to work,” Norb said indignantly, as the Tall Lady just stood there dumbly.   
Chop. She watched as the tiny tool struck sideways against the trunk of a sapling. An image flashed in her mind, of a large man with an axe and a young tawny-haired boy at the foot of a stone tower in the middle of a forest.  
“You-you’re doing it wrong,” she muttered.  
Chop. Norb’s little axe launched a small chip of wood into the air as it swung downwards into the fallen bough of an ash, broken off of the tree that shaded him. She thought she saw the brown-haired boy again before her, now a young man, wielding the axe himself as he felled a mighty oak. Blinking the vision away, she saw that there were no oaks in this murky wood.   
“Uuuuh…” she groaned.  
Chop. In her mind’s eye, the arrhythmic hacking of the goblins induced the picture of a charming blonde woman cradling a baby boy in her arms.  
“Oi, whatsa matter widja? You alright there, Lady,” the oldest boy Ghee asked.  
“I..I’m…oh…” she gasped, feeling sick to her stomach.  
Chop. She steadied herself against the cart, rubbing her forehead with one hand. She grabbed an axe out of the cart and felt a sudden twinge racing up her arm as a flood of memories rushed forth. She looked at the rod of wood and iron in her hand, and a shimmering phantasm whisked before her eyes, of a maelstrom of light and the shrieking face of a terrified woman as a large bearded axe shore through it.  
“OH GOD!” she screamed and collapsed to the cool damp earth, sobbing.

The goblins hurriedly dragged the human woman home on the wooden wagon, ignoring Souv’s complaints about the distinct lack of firewood and instructing her to boil some tea steeped with raw toad-sweat to calm the trembling tall lady’s nerves.  
“What the hell’s wrong with ‘er,” Souv entreated her husband as she tried to get the human to drink between her incessant repeating wails of “oh God” and “I’m him.”  
“Blow me if I know,” Norb replied with bewilderment. “Humies are queer folk.”  
“My name…I know my name…”the tall lady whimpered. She gulped painfully. “My name is Renadion.”  
“Renadion? Isn’t that a boy’s name,” Norb asked dimwittedly.  
The woman nodded.  
“That weren’t no pecker I’ve ever seen, unless you humies are smaller than goblins,” Souv chided knowledgably.  
“I know it’s not,” the female Renadion replied. She…he…cringed to think about it. “I don’t know how I can explain it to you, but you must believe me. I have to find a way to undo…this,” she said, gesturing towards the prominent femininity of her body. “I need to get to Ardenvale…to my wife and my son.”  
The brood of a dozen or so little goblin pups listening with rapt attention to the big strange pink-skinned thing began clambering over their parents and Renadion, pestering the three adults with indecisive cries of “don’t let the tall lady leave” and “help her get home mummy and daddy.”  
“Well, I don’t know where Ardenvale is,” Norb decreed, “but I’ve got a daughter working in the tavern in Roksburg. She can help you find someone with knowledge of the world. I’ll walk you there first thing in the morning.”   
“Like hell you will,” Souv snapped. “I’ll be takin’ ‘er you lout. I’ve not seen Bee for months. You watch the lil monsters and I’ll see for myself where this Rena..Renaddy…whatshisname is hiding that pecker. You’ll be goin’ too Gee, it’s about damn time you’ve gotten outta the house like Bee has.”  
Renadion nearly laughed, and smiled with a renewed sense of hope and purpose. She bent down and hugged the two goblins in a wide-armed embrace, smothering them against her chest, incognizant of the rapturous expressions on their faces as they were squished into the soft bosoms and their bounding ragamuffins congratulated and griped at their lucky older brother.  
“Thank you so much,” she said with tears in her eyes. “But I can’t leave just yet. I still have a job to do.”  
Several days of toil later and with enough hewn tinder keep the little goblin homestead warm for the foreseeable future, Renadion left just before dawn accompanied by Ghee riding on her shoulders and Souv heading the goat-drawn cart at her side. It was late in the morning when they exited the swamp into the vast, dusty, sagebrush coated plains of Orcoland, a thin plume of black smoke at the edge of the horizon the only sign of habitation marking their destination.   
As they approached late in the day, Renadion saw to her astonishment that the smoke was not merely the refuse of some tribal firepit, but aggregated from the chimneys of dozens of sturdily constructed wooden buildings bordered by a palisade. Just outside the walls, the road that led into the town of the Green Men was littered with adobe stables and livery stations for horse and bison. A sign above the open gate read in human letters “New Gartiville.” Green Men – orcs – paced the street, the men clad in trousers and vests of brown fabric with leather boots and wide-brimmed felt hats, while the women were attired much the same but with ruffled white blouses and tight bodices to enhance their figures. Renadion was struck by how utterly ordinary they looked, scarcely different than the peasants of his own village, nothing at all like the brutish impression given from the stories he’d heard told of Felashi Burnt-hand and others of her kind.  
Souv led them to an inn labeled “Brodigo’s Saloon” up the street, hitching her cart to the post out front. She hustled Renadion and Ghee inside the crowded tavern, where a well-dressed goblin barmaid was dancing a lively jig on a table in front of the bar’s patrons.   
She glanced at the new arrivals and shouted “Mum, ya old biddy!”, hopping off the table and giving a quick hug to Souv and a playful slap to Ghee. “Who’s the humie,” she queried, brushing off the hem of her skirt and raising her eyebrow at Renadion flirtatiously.  
“This is Ren…Rena…”  
“Renadion,” the woman finshed.  
“Right. She’s gotten lost and needs ta find her way home. She’s a good hand around the house, maybe you can teach her the tricks of the trade so she can earn ‘er fare west.” Renadion looked at   
“Oh that’d be absolutely marv! You can sleep in my room hun,” Bee said with a wink. “But we gotta do something about that name, too manly. Wot about Renadna? That seems like a pretty name for a big pinkie like yoreself.”   
“Okaaay,” Renadion stammered slowly, quickly grasping why bringing attention to her peculiar gender situation might be ill-advised. She left the goblins to their family reunion, while seeking out the bartender in hopes of getting some information about where he was and how to get back to Ardaria.  
“Good evening miss,” the neatly groomed orc barkeep politely greeted her. “We don’t see many pin- humans around these parts,” he said, remembering his manners, “how can Brodigo help you?” He had an extravagant set of whiskers that stretched from one temple to the other by way of his lower cheek and upper lip.  
“I’m…lost. I need directions to the Kingdom of Ardaria.”  
“I’m afraid I don’t know where that is, miss.”  
“It’s in Mellar-hone, to the west.”  
“That’s a long way to the west miss, across the sea.”  
“How far away would you say it is?”  
“Can’t rightly say, we don’t know much about the world beyond our borders. All we know of is the trading route to Hallth, and that’s a good ways away. If’n you’re trying to get there, it’s gonna take money.”  
“I don’t have any money,” Renadion sighed.  
“That’s what I reckoned. Tell you what, you work for me for a month or two, the wages’ll buy you fare west at least as far as the Grey Ukskills, east of the Divide.” The place names were meaningless to Renadion.  
“A month or two?”  
“Well, if you’re interested, there’s faster ways of earning money,” Brodigo pointed with his head towards the stairs to the second floor of the inn, where an orc waitress was already loosening her blouse as she led cackling goblin fellow waving a jingling bag of coins behind her.  
“No! None of…that.” she snapped. It was way too soon to be thinking of doing that with her body.  
“That’s fine miss, I’ll tell the clients you’re just for looking at. They’ll know to keep their hands to themselves with a new girl. Now if you’ll be good enough to give me your name, I can have a contract signed up and get you fitted for the uniform.”  
“Ren…Renadna,” Renadion said with a slight sense of bewilderment. Brodigo noticed her fluster.  
“I’ve seen that look before, Miss Renadna,” he said with a bemused smile, “whether it’s dwarf, or faoladh, or serpent, they never let go of the old stories. It’s been over 600 years since the last orc horde ravaged across Greater Hallth. Our tempers have mellowed out since then, and without the sorceress of Kern holding us in her thrall, we’ve had plenty of time to settle down and keep to ourselves, which is the way we like it.”  
Renadion shuddered. “Sorceress of Kern?”  
“Some thousand-year-old witch,” Brodigo said casually. “Long dead. Green folk build an effigy twice a year and let the kids whack it with sticks in return for sweets. Lovely holiday. Lots of screwing though, you’ll want to be off before then.”  
“Uh-huh.”

“Does it really have to show off so much of my chest?” Renadion asked Bee, as the goblin maid laced the bodice that lifted the substantial bosom in the human’s thin blouse.  
“Course it does,” she shouted gleefully, shaking her own chest. “If yore not gonna screw, you gotta show off the girls! Best way to part louts and ladies from their coin!”  
“Oof. Fine. What are you looking at?” Ren snarled at Ghee, the young male goblin shamelessly staring as the human woman dressed.  
“Those big boobies o’ yore’s. Are all humies that big?”  
“No! And don’t call them that!”  
Green folk, it seemed to Renadion, did not seem to place too much emphasis on sexual propriety as other races. Not even the faoladh dog-men or serpents were this licentious. They had pretty strong opinions about consent and the age thereof, but very little concern as to the exclusivity of relationships or to the gender of their partner; it seemed like plenty of happily married green men and women would lie with their own kind before heading back to their wives and husbands and lying with them.   
Bee herself, the wanton little hussy, would cozy up to any patron in the bar and start flirting relentlessly, regardless of the size or race of the object of her affections. Renadion couldn’t help but gawk at the lascivious displays.  
“Does his lordship wanna come upstairs for a good time?” she beckoned sweetly, clinging to a large orc’s hairy arm.  
“No fakka. Grug married. Love wife. Take sister-son. Zug not have woman yet. Time to learn,” the green man said, nodding to his companion, and fishing out a couple extra pieces of silver from his coinpurse.  
“Blimey, ain’t you a handsome one,” she said, immediately switching her attentions to the beardless young man beside Grug. “I’ll go freshen up. Look for the door on the left with the pretty flowers and goats painted on it,” Bee called back as she raced up the stairs.  
“Uncle, why are you talking like that,” the clean-cut Zug whispered to Grug.  
“Zagobert, women love it when you act dumber than they are, and when you’re dealing with goblins, that really means something. One of these days, when you settle down with a wife or two, you’ll thank me.”   
Renadion stared in awe, humbled by just how little she knew of these complex people. Fortunately, Bee was more than eager to explain anything and everything about life with orcs, as well as the finer points of womanhood, in excruciating detail. How to dress oneself, how to clean oneself, how to deal with that time of the month, how to walk, how to talk. Well, maybe not to talk; Renadion learnt it was probably better to keep her mouth shut as much as possible, and that coy silence earned more than a few pieces of silver and gold tossed into the deep canyon that lied between her neck and the front of her blouse.   
Try as she might, Renadna could not escape the pervading atmosphere of erotic discourse and it was clearly getting on her nerves. The green men never laid a hand on her if it wasn’t invited first, but they had no scruples about letting everyone within earshot know exactly what they thought of their winsome, buxom hostess, and the endless propositions of gold for private entertainment were exasperating. The women were even worse; Renadna’s ideas of female companionship was predicated on the assumption that she was a man, and though she could not deny the stark angular beauty of orc women, she was – as Renadion the man – wholly devoted to her wife. She was positively uninterested in exploring the new plumbing that vile sorceries had implanted upon her against her will; both out of fidelity to her family and fear that she might enjoy it.  
As luck would have it, a trade caravan to the Divide was passing through New Gartiville and in dire need of hands. Eager to rid herself of the unwanted suitors, Renadna promptly scrounged for all the coin she had saved up to book passage – and was persuaded to accept a portion of Bee’s substantial and ill-gained nest-egg to make up the difference in return for a hearty grope of Renadna’s fleshy melons. Convinced that that was a more than satisfactory farewell, she dragged Ghee along out of the dusty town, trading her thin lacy barmaid’s outfit for a sturdy woolen dress to seek what Ghee called adventure and Renadna called home.

“So why did your parents want you out of the house so badly,” Renadna asked her impish companion as the wagon trundled along the main road out of the fourth green-town they’ve passed in as many days, its reptilian driver ignoring the warm-blooded passengers sitting amidst the cargo.  
“I’ve been itching to get out of that pisspot since I was 7, and let mum and dad know it,” Ghee replied with a sense of self-satisfaction, irking Renadna’s sense of filial piety.  
“How long have you been tormenting your poor parents like that,” she said sternly.  
“Oh, goin’ on four years now, I think. They were just as happy to be rid of me I’m sure, us whelps oughta be outta the house by my age.”  
“Four years? Wait a minute, you’re only eleven years old?” she inquired aghast. The little green cretin had been propositioning her for weeks.  
“Oh that’s right, big folks age slower,” Ghee remembered. “Gobs only live thirty or forty years. Me mum and dad were screwing when they was six, and here I am stuck with a pinkskin beaut who won’t put out,” he sulked. “Least we don’t get ugly when we grow old,” he added proudly.  
She had no idea the small greenskin was already a fully grown man. She guessed she should have figured it out when she considered that he was roughly the same size as his parents and older sister Bee, but frankly the short stature had always given Renadna the false impression of youth to the goblins, even when they were as full-figured as any human matron or wearing thick beards. It was a bit hard to resist the paternal – or rather maternal – affection she felt for him, especially after carrying him over her shoulders the way she had done when she was father to Thair, but she’d have to start treating the little churl like a grown man from now on.  
It was about twenty miles from the Divide, a vast mountain range that stretched a thousand leagues to the south and separated Orcoland from the Empire of Hallth, that Renadna’s money ran out. She was not keen on returning to tending tables at a tavern, not while still within the realm of so many bawdy orcs, even if the increasing presence of the other races mollified their indecent behavior somewhat. To the south stretched more orc-country, and the borders of dwarven lands which encompassed the nearly impassable desert west of the Divide. But to the north lie the Grey Hills, a less habitable part of rugged orc-country wilderness where brigands and beasts roamed and only Imperial Rangers kept the peace.   
When a serpentman at the head of the merchant caravan hissed word of a logging town he knew in the grey hills, Renadna’s eyes perked up. “Sssseek Ruggiero Flat-faccce,” he told the woman, and she bartered for a few days’ worth of supplies to support her journey north into the pine forests in the foothills of the Divide.

“You’re joking,” the pug-nosed, balding orc said disdainfully in the shade of the makeshift office at the back-end of the camp, near the river Fannon, taking a break from the sweltering summer heat. The Divide created a rain-shadow on the western side of the mountains, but here the climate was relatively temperate. The river Fannon was the only way across the Divide this far north, and the frontier that stretched along its banks was lawless and wild, fraught with strife and peril.  
“No, I mean it, I am an experienced woodsman,” Renadna said, seizing the opportunity to do something she knows and loves instead of merely surviving. “I learnt the trade from my father, and I can work a bandsaw or chopping axe as well as any man,” she explained, cleverly eliding the fact that she was considerably out of practice, out of shape, and for that matter, out of body.  
“Aargh,” Ruggiero Flat-face groaned in acquiescence. “That bitch’ll have my hide for this.”  
“Who?”   
“Some damn ranger that keeps crawling up me arse with complaints about abusing weakling humies – no offence. She’s got it out for me. Do you have papers?”  
Renadna wasn’t aware she needed any. She shook her head. Ruggiero’s face soured even more.  
“Can you read and write?”  
“Yes, a little,” she replied warily. Renadion’s father taught him to read, but he had never quite grasped the intricacies of holding a pen, and it was only with great difficulty that he had learnt to put his name to paper.  
“That’ll do. Sign this contract here,” he pointed to a scroll of parchment he peeled out of a drawer in a dust-covered trunk, “and here. Old Lash won’t give me the lash for slaving again.”  
Ignoring that remark, Renadna shook the orc’s hand, eager to get back in her element. With the woodcutting skill inherited from her past life, she was certain she’d be booking passage upriver on a ferry in a few days.  
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.  
Renadna was sweating despite the chill mountain air, the bare muscles of her shirtless back glistening in the morning sun as she swung her axe against the craggy-barked pine. Her white working tunic had been discarded as she labored at the front of the logging camp, and Ghee propped it up with a stick as a shade while he idly laid back and let the small fire in front of him burn the eggs and bacon in the pan above it. The goblin watched half-naked woman, clad in nothing but boots and breeches, in libidinous fascination and contentment as the tendons rippled under her skin and her drooping breasts swayed back and forth with each swing.  
She heard the clip-clop of the horse’s gait as neared, too engrossed in her task to spare more than a passing glance at the approaching rider.  
“Ruggiero!” a harsh female voice echoed down the canyon as the rider called out to the foreman’s cabin. It sounded familiar somehow. The squat, scruffy orc trudged grumpily down the hill.  
“Shite woman, what is it now, don’t I get enough guff from you as it is?”  
“How many times have I told you not to overwork humans,” the rider growled venomously, pointing at Renadna several yards away.  
“She’s always like this Lash, don’t get so excited. I’ve never had a more eager woodsman in all my years in the business,” Ruggiero tried in vain to calm her down.   
The word woodsman seemed to trigger a special fury in the rider. Renadna paid her no mind.  
“I want to see her working permits, now! If you’ve been trafficking in slaves again, I’ll have you skinned alive!”   
The way she said those words, like she really meant it, finally caught Renadna’s attention, and she paused at her work long enough to spin around and face the new arrival that was steadily getting on her nerves by distracting her from her calming vocation. Ruggiero was already jogging back to the cabin. She grimaced and squinted at the pestilent green woman, taking in the sight of her grim black horse and the gnarled pig-iron she wore for armor.  
“Have you no shame, little mother? Cover yourself, human,” the orcess spat disgustedly.   
“Leave Ruggiero alone,” Renadna bellowed in her passionate contralto voice. “I am no slave,” she said, hefting her axe over her shoulder.  
The she-orc shifted in the saddle to rest her right hand on the pommel of her sword, the bearskin draped over her shoulders sliding off her left side to expose the hideously maimed arm resting against her hip. The fiery yellow of her mournful eyes met the green of Renadna’s, and she froze. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she gasped.  
Renadna recognized her instantly.  
“Felashi!”   
In a burst of sudden modesty, she dropped her axe to the ground and wrapped her arms over her chest. She tore her shirt off Ghee’s makeshift tent, leaving him griping about the sun in his eyes, and promptly slid it over her head. Felashi Burnt-Hand dismounted her steed, her gaping jaw making her tusks seem more prominent.  
“Is it true,” she repeated over and over again, as she marched steadily towards Renadna, her eyes fixed upon the human. “Are you He,” she asked breathlessly as she gripped Renadna’s shoulders. She repeated more forcefully, “are you He?”   
No longer one for words after the shock of her life-altering transformation, the human nodded and replied laconically, and with no small amount of sheepishness, “I am Renadion.”

“Four years?” Renadna gasped as Felashi explained what had happened in Renadion’s absence. The Vanguard paladins had returned to Hallth as heroes, but Felashi had broken her oath and consigned herself in self-imposed disgrace to prowling the banks of the Fannon as a Ranger, policing the frontier with her stern and unforgiving sense of justice. “But…but…it can’t have been that long...Ghee how long ago did I arrive at your parents’ house?”  
“Ah…” the goblin said, struggling with the arithmetic on his fingers. “Eight or nine months I’d guess.”  
It had been less than a year since Renadion had woken up transformed by the abominable world-bending sorceries of Zhadia, but Felashi Burnt-hand insisted that the nearly cataclysmic event that forever changed his – her – life had happened far earlier. This puzzlement clearly illustrated the importance of reaching Gaberroun the Grand Mage; if he could figure out what happened in the ruins of the Endless Groves, maybe he could discover a means of restoring Renadion’s form.  
“But how did you recognize me,” Renadna turned to Felashi.   
“It’s in your eyes. The stain of unCreation is upon you little father,” she retorted cryptically. “Only those molded by sorcery possess it. The eyes alone remain untouched. Those are the same eyes of the man who wept for my dead kindred that day in Mellar-hone.”  
“I didn’t cry,” Renadna replied defensively, the old habits of her male-self flaring up.  
“Tears are not the only way to weep, little father.”  
“How’d you come to know all that stuff about magic anyway,” Ghee asked irreverently.   
Felashi’s sad eyes gazed into the distance. “It is written in fire upon my flesh.”   
Renadna slapped Ghee silent when he tried to probe further.  
Felashi Burnt-hand offered a horse, arms, and provisions without hesitation to Renadna, buying out her contract from Ruggiero in a bid to immediately start the long trek down the Fannon to the Imperial capital of Hallth. They were ready to leave by tomorrow morning, but were waylaid on their way to sleep; as the torchlights came out after dark, the sounds of hoofbeats and screams echoed down the canyon as a band of armed ruffians on horseback came whooping and hollering into the logging town, running down everyone who couldn’t make it indoors and shooting fire-arrows into the windows and roofs of the buildings.  
“What’s going on, Felashi?” Renadna whispered worriedly.  
“Brigands of Morrh,” she growled with loathing written on her face. “I’ve been hunting them for weeks. Always one step ahead of me. This time I am ahead of them. Stay here and hide, little father,” she told the young woman, “I will deal with this.”  
Renadna watched with quiet apprehension in the dark of the woods at the edge of town, as the green woman strode down the middle of the street in full armor and challenged the band of raiders.  
“Adoval, Bastard of Morrh, I come now to liberate your head from its body. Give yourself up willingly and I will tell your father you died with honor before I hang him from his own gibbet. I will spare the rest.”  
Renadna was impressed by her overconfidence. Adoval was not. With an unutterable curse directed at the Mother of Ash, he ordered his lightly armored desperados drew their bows and unleashed arrow after arrow at Felashi. Most bounced off her carapace of pitted iron, but a few found their way in between the cracks and joints to lodge in her flesh with a nauseating wet thunk. Unperturbed, she tore the arrows out of her body with her own hands without breaking her stride as she ran into combat, scattering the mounted men when her ugly hooked sword exposed a man’s innards to the cool night air.  
When she saw the arrows pierce Felashi’s flesh, something happened to Renadna. Without being wholly aware of what she was doing, she picked up the axe she had used to cut wood earlier in the day. She felt as if she were in a dream, a cool sense of calm enveloping her senses. The fight disappeared before her as she walked slowly into town. In place of the log cabins she knew were there, she saw spectral figures of trees, rocks, and wildlife. Fresh saplings were undulating in the breeze, one in particular almost calling out to be rendered into a fishing pole, or walking stick, or the handle of a spade. She gripped the thin waist of the sapling in one hand, and in the other she brought down her hatchet at the base of the trunk where it met the ground. When next she opened her eyes, she was staring at the severed head of Adoval hanging by its hair in her fingertips, the brigands screaming as they ran off into the forest, Felashi staring at her with a mixed sense of awe and admiration through the crowd of cheering men and orcs that were lifting Renadna into the air on their shoulders.  
They started down the Fannon late the next day, waiting for Renadna to finish vomiting out her first taste of bloodshed.   
“Oi, when you hacked that smug pinkie’s head off it was so cool! You should have seen it! Of course you saw it, you did it! Where did you learn to fight like that,” Ghee pestered at her constantly, endlessly repeating the graphic details from the fight in which she was not wholly aware of participating.  
“The little father fights well,” Felashi complimented grimly. “I did not expect that of a human peasant. When next we encounter a smithy, I will procure better arms for you.” At no point did the she-orc smile, but one of her eyebrows raised in wry respect.   
“Where are we going now,” Renadna asked curiously as she rode along the trail, surveying with wonder the wide green valley on either bank of the Fannon, the mountain peaks fading into the distance.  
“Ten days’ ride to the Duchy of Morrh. Another three days to his seat.”  
“Morrh? You mean…”, Renadna trailed off, looking at round burlap sack the size of watermelon tied to Felashi’s saddle, the bottom soaked and stained a foul rusty red.  
“The Duke will not escape justice this time. Not when I present this proof to the Vanguard. For too long have I seen the depredations of this savage masquerading as a noble. As a liege-lord, he has betrayed his vassals. As a vassal he has betrayed his emperor. I go now to end this dispute and see the emperor’s justice meted out.” Then the tone of her voice lightened considerably, “I would be pleased if the little father proved indispensable in this quest.”  
“If the villagers send word of what I did along the river,” Renadna said hopefully, remembering it was her hand that slew the Duke’s son, “then maybe the emperor’s men will know we’re coming.”  
“That is what I am afraid of,” said Felashi.

Seven days into the trek, Renadna stared through the dim moonlight at Felashi Burnt-hand as she slept flat on her back, in the nude, as was her wont. In daylight, she felt nudity was appalling, but she had no qualms about such things in the tent at night.  
Despite the steadfastness of the love her male-self had for his wife Arinea, Renadna could not help but be captivated by her harsh, barbarian beauty. The curve of her breasts and buttocks; the sinewy muscles that graced her sturdy abdomen and long legs; the treasure trail of thin black fuzz that ran down her navel to her nethers; the strong yet feminine jaw, aquiline nose, and sad, noble brow; the small pink scars that pockmarked her body, accentuating the handsomeness of her features instead of detracting from them. With no small amount of shame, Renadna caught her thoughts straying in unwholesome directions, and an unfamiliar yet not altogether unpleasant heat grew at the cleft between her thighs as the maleness of her mind enacted its will upon the hormones of her as yet foreign body. She shifted her attention away from the lascivious ideas within her head to the source of Felashi’s epithet. Only the horribly mangled left-arm, hideously burnt by the atrocious tragedy of her youth, marred the virtual perfection of the whole.  
She gently placed her right hand on that arm. Felashi did not stir. At the sensation of touching the scarred tissue, Renadna felt a painful stirring in her breast, as if she were suffering the same mental agony of Felashi’s loss. She wanted nothing more than to alleviate in some small way the pain of the she-orc’s existence, to remove the burden she had placed upon herself, the inescapable and all-consuming grief. Renadna fell asleep, dreaming of the blooming flowers and new leaves of spring, not seeing the spot of green that begun to spread across the angry red flesh where her hand touched Felashi’s.  
At first light, Renadna was awoken by a dreadful wail from the middle of the camp. She sat up on her bedroll to see Felashi in front of the newly kindled campfire, clutching her left arm and stalking around the campsite without her clothes on, beating her chest and shouting at the heavens. Ghee was sitting off to the side, a luxuriant look on his face and one hand under his britches as he took in the sight. Her arm – was the same hue of olive-green as the rest of her body. Renadna gasped in astonishment so loudly it attracted the attention of the she-orc.  
“What have you done!” Felashi howled, her blistering golden eyes wild with hatred.  
“I didn’t do anything,” Renadna whimpered.  
“I woke with your hand touching my arm! The witch lives in you!”   
But these words were not spoken with the same rage. Her voice was cracking and her chest was hiccoughing. She crept towards Renadna’s bedroll before thinking better of it, and moved to her own, where she fell face-down, her body wracked with sobs as she bawled like a child.   
“What was all that about,” Ghee asked impertinently, his hand still moving under his pants.  
Renadna grimaced in disgust. “Ugh, go do that in the bushes.”  
“As you wish, milady,” and he scampered off into the underbrush, his head peeking out behind a tree.  
Nearly an hour passed before Felashi had calmed down enough to put clothes on. Renadna spent nearly the whole time looking at her own hands and the she-orc’s in curious wonder.  
“Do you know what you have done,” Felashi moaned quietly.  
“I didn’t mean to,” Renadna tried to apologize limply.  
“Those scars…were my entire life. It was my badge of authority in the Empire. One look at that arm chilled the bones of everyone with ill-will in their hearts. Upon that arm was etched every memory of my sons…my husband…my clan.” She paused a moment to inhale and exhale slowly. “I was sheriff of Briar-boar, five hundred miles to the south of the Grey Hills,” she began sedately. “The town that no longer exists. All my clan lived there. Murderers came to that town. We arrested them. Hanged them. Buried them. But She came. She raised them. The Unreborn revenants of the outlaws could not be cut. They were solid, yet not solid. They burnt the town. They dug a pit and filled it with pitch. They rounded up my people…forced them into the pit…and burned them, while I was made to watch. I reached into the fire, but I could not save a single one. The wights were gone. I could do nothing. The dead were dead. I could not reach them.”  
Renadna put her arms around her shoulders in a gesture of consolation. Felashi did not register the touch.  
“That day I pledged that no man or beast would ever escape vengeance for separating a parent from a child, a husband from a wife. For 16 years I kept that oath. For 16 years the very mention of my name made cutthroats and assassins think twice before entering a civilized town in all of Greater Hallth. Until you. You disappeared that night in Mellar-hone, and again I was cheated of shedding the blood of your murderer. Now I am no-one. Now you and She are the same being. You are my enemy…and my charge.”  
“I am not your enemy, Felashi. Please look at me.” The she-orc craned her neck around, no hint of emotion on her face to betray her feelings. “I am not Zhadia. I am Renadion. I don’t know what…this…is,” Renadna said, lifting her hands and waving towards her body, “but I am still that young man you met in Ardenvale. I don’t want any of this. All I want is to get back home to my family. Please, help me,” she implored the orcess. “You may not be Felashi Burnt-hand anymore, but you can still be Felashi Oath-keeper, Mother of Life, keeper of the memory of Briar-boar.”  
There was a trace of sadness to it, but for the first time in over twenty years, Felashi, the grieving orc avenger, smiled. 

At the last town before they crossed the borders of Morrh, Felashi haggled brutishly with a Faoladh arms merchant and her blacksmith husband, the piebald fur of their hackles stiff with anxiety over selling weapons and armor to an Imperial when there were renegade knights roving outside of the borders of Morrh. Ghee hid his excitement.  
“This is the best you could do for the price?” the scruffy green speck asked indignantly as he fooled around with a treacherous looking dirk, dodging a slap from Renadna.  
“Best I could do on short notice,” she said, handing Renadna a light shirt of mail to wear under her leather jerkin, a small arming sword to sheath at her belt, and stiff iron greaves and gauntlets. It was uncomfortable at first, but the novelty of wearing armor filled her with a lust for action and danger and a sense that she could take on anything in the world.  
Within a few days, they could see smoke rising over the hills. They crept around the edge of the forest, discovering a large battlefield in front of a small castle nestled in a rocky crevasse a half-mile away. Villages were burning in the distance. One of the forces – the considerably larger one – bore blue and white standards, upon which was the symbol of a yellow dog, standing on two legs.  
“Damn! Thaless wasn’t supposed to attack until after I brought him evidence of the Duke’s misdeeds,” Felashi hissed.  
“Sir Thaless is here?” Renadna remembered the hefty faoladh knight who had come to her town seeking the Sorceress of Kern. “That’s wonderful news though, we can march right in there and bring this evil duke to justice. What’s the matter?”  
“Morrh abducted an Imperial princess. Some niece of the Emperor, one of many obscure relatives. He seeks to marry into the Imperial family, which will instantly grant him a senate seat. If he becomes a senator, Thaless’ army will immediately revert to his control, and what he will do to Thaless and me afterwards will b-” Felashi paused mid-sentence, sniffing the air tentatively and the small points of her ears pricked up. Her eyes suddenly seemed nervous. “Where is that small green pet of yours?”  
“Ghee? He was just here a minute ago. Where could that little -GRMMMPH!”   
Renadna was cut off as a thick cloth was pulled over her face and her arms were pinioned behind her back by footpads who’d leapt out of the trees and forced her to the ground. She looked up from the pine-needle strewn dirt to see Felashi similarly constrained, the full weight of eight human knights pinning her to the ground to control her thrashing and muffled screams of rage.  
“You sure this is the one,” one of Morrh’s men asked, “she ain’t got no scarred arm.”  
The one holding down Renadna answered, “it’s an orc, it’s a woman, it’s armed. I don’t care who it is, we’re bringing ‘em to the Duke, just like he ordered.” Renadna felt cold steel at the back of her neck and stopped whimpering into the gag. “Now miss orc, you’ll be coming with us peaceable like, if you want this girl to stay alive,” the man said to Felashi, her yellow eyes seething above the grey cloth that covered the lower half of her face.   
The duke’s guardsman took her low throaty growl as an assent, and they pulled the two women to their feet, marching them along the forest trail in the direction of the keep. Renadna was trembling with fear. She looked to Felashi for help, but the she-orc’s eyes were icy-cold. The men waited until dark for the armies of Sir Thaless to retreat to camp and prepare the next day’s assault before they crept back into the Duke’s castle to bring their captives before him. The hall was draped with tapestries and heraldry, the walls teeming with mounted weapons like halberds and spears. The Duke of Morrh was only middle-aged but had close-cropped white hair and a short beard. He was gesticulating wildly towards an imperious-looking young woman with long straight black hair in a regal green gown who bore the distinct impression of someone who did not want to be there.  
“You told me you were going to make me a senator, Nisaras! Now the armies the emperor are at my gates and that dumb dog is ready to put my head on a pike,” he yelled in a high-pitched gravelly voiced at the woman.  
“I never told you to kidnap me you monstrous idiot! What makes you think I’ll marry you now!” The woman he called Nisaras gasped with dismayed recognition when she saw the two captives brought before her. The white-haired duke’s expression suddenly turned to one of immense satisfaction.  
“What’s this,” he said with a laugh. “Is that Felashi Burnt-hand I see, hauled before me in chains? Oh, this is wonderful! Now you see Nisaras, I have the means to force you to marry me! If you do not tell Thaless to cease his assault and deliver his forces unto me, then I will throw his companion off the battlements with a rope around her neck. And who is this striking young thing,” he approached Renadna, gripping her cloth-covered jaw in his hands, inspecting her face. “Perhaps you might make a fine wife for my son. It’s not such a bad thing to marry into a senator’s family,” he entreated the whimpering, gagged brunette with the haggling nature of a merchant.   
Felashi began to make a wet, wretching sound, her body convulsing dreadfully in the grips of the knights struggling to keep her still. It was a moment or two before Renadna realized what it was: laughter.  
“And what’s so funny,” the Duke said, ripping away the cloth covering the she-orc’s mouth, permitting her cackling echo sickeningly through the hall.  
“The Duke of Morrh will have trouble marrying his bastard to the one who liberated his head from his body!”  
The Duke stood aghast in disbelief, switching his gaze to Renadna to witness the nervous expression that told him what he heard was true. With fury he faced Felashi again. “You won’t find it so humorous when I have your arms sawn off and release you as a pleasure slave to my soldiers,” he said viciously, and she spat in his face.  
Caught off guard by her unnatural mirth, the guards had failed to notice that Felashi had broken her bonds, and ripped a sword directly out of a knight’s scabbard, twirling wildly as she cut one down and held back the mob of armed men encroaching on her.  
“You fools, this isn’t Felashi the ranger! Kill her at once,” the Duke yelled furiously.   
At this outburst, something in Renadna snapped. What happened next was a blur. She swooned in her restraints and felt faint as the guards at her side abandoned the seemingly hapless female to manhandle the flailing orc. Once again she found herself in a dark spectral forest, the trees white silhouettes against a black void. She felt her hands had been snared in the twine of Renadion’s fishing rod, and easily slipped out of the tangle, grabbing the axe that was leaning against a stump as she returned to work from her midday rest. She saw a copse of small firs crowded around a lone cypress. The tallest fir was perfectly symmetrical but for a single bough sticking out grotesquely near the bottom of the trunk, ruining its profile. She pushed through the boughts of the firs and raised Renadion’s axe…  
…and the next thing Renadna knew she was covered in a welter of gore, the princess Nisaras clinging to her waist, the mad Duke howling in agony, clutching the bleeding stump of his right arm, which lay some distance away. In her hands was a massive steel bardiche nearly eight feet long, its heavy blade resting on the stone floor, a hollow embrasure in the plaque upon the wall in which it had formerly rested. Several of the guards lie dead on the floor, the rest backed cautiously against the walls of the citadel, the pommels of their swords thrust out in submission as Felashi held them at blade’s edge while a deafening boom rapped repeatedly against the huge doors bulging inwards into the Duke’s hall.   
With a great rumbling crash, the wooden doors burst open, as the faoladh knights of Sir Thaless the Indomitable rushed into the grand hall. Upon Thaless’ own shoulders, the goblin Ghee rode triumphantly, brandishing a bloody dagger as he loudly exulted the excitement of the storming of Castle Morrh.   
“There are you Lady Felashi! I hope you’ll forgive the tardiness of our rescue, but we had a slight war to contend with,” the large dog-man bellowed proudly. “Fortunately our little green friend here explained the urgency of your predicament. And who is this fell young maiden with the countenance of queen and the bearing of a knight,” the faoladh asked, bowing chivalrously at the brown-haired woman.  
“Mmmrrmm,” Renadna grunted, not realizing the cloth the duke’s men had gagged her with was still bound around her head. She yanked it off sheepishly, blushing as she greeted the burly faoladh. “Renad…Renadna, your highness.”  
“And such impeccably fine breeding too! You must introduce her to me properly under better circumstances, Lady Felashi, she looks like she’d make a fine addition to the ranks of the vanguard.”  
The imperial princess Nisaras spoke up. “This brave lady-knight with the great halberd that stands before you good Sir Knight has just rescued me from the dastardly clutches of the Duke of Morrh who sought to marry me against my will to usurp power from the Imperial throne and wrought terrible vengeance against his perfidy. She deserves special commendation from my uncle the Emperor.”   
“Verily she does,” Thaless boasted, “and upon my word, the vanguard will convey you at once to the capital. Mayhaps, the Emperor will reward the woman wielding the doughty razor with the old duke’s fiefdom in return for such a glorious service rendered unto him.”   
Renadna stood timorously, her gloved hand wiping the hair away from her brow, stunned at the implications of the nobles’ words. When she was Renadion, she had always dreamt of storming castles and battling legions of foes, and rescuing beautiful damsels from wicked aristocrats, and as every young boy does, even of being a king of his own realm. Now she realized, all of Renadion’s wildest childhood flights of fancy were coming true, and she couldn’t help but grin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the sex scene in it, at least for the time being - I may split these chapters up

“At once” was considerably longer than Thaless’s promise had led Renadna to believe. He tarried some weeks in the duchy of Morrh, organizing the restructuring of the realm into a temporary military prefecture under direct control of the Emperor, overseeing the repair and relief of the ransacked towns and their populations, and ensuring the Duke’s demise was an unpleasant enough spectacle to convince his misled troops never to question their loyalty to the Emperor again. Unfortunately, Felashi had not had time to speak with Thaless about a certain matter of identity before word of Renadna, “the Razor-woman of Morrh”, had already spread up and down both ends of the river Fannon.  
“My word! I apologize for my presumption, milady,” the faoladh whined guiltily, “but you must admit, your mien is somewhat changed since last we met.”  
“Tell me about it,” Renadna said sarcastically.  
“Your tale has cut my soul to the very quick, Renadion,” Thaless continued unperturbed. “I shall deliver you to the Mage’s Guild in Chiras Hook, where Gaberroun resides. If anyone can reverse your ill fortune and restore you to your comely damosel, it is he.”  
“ ‘At once’ tomorrow, or ‘at once’ next month,” Felashi growled impatiently.  
The faoladh cocked his head quizzically to one side before bursting out in whooping laughter, the large blunt white fangs lining his muzzle champing. “How quick the wit is of the Lady Felashi! Upon my honor, we shall sally forth on the morrow.”  
It was 800 miles along the Fannon to the great hilly plains of the country of Vimber, and twice that again to the great Imperial capital of Chiras Hook. Harried and harassed all the way by the broken kingdoms of Fannon country that had collapsed in the foolhardy personal crusade of the Duke of Morrh and the unsavory beasts and bandits that had sprung up in their wake, it would be nearly half a year before Renadna and her companions reached the grand port city situated at the shortest distance between the continent of Greater Hallth and Mellar-hone across the sea.  
In the interim, Sir Thaless’s boundless generosity and keen eye for martial propriety spend considerable time and funds outfitting Renadna with the arms to match what he perceived as her preternatural gallantry in battle. She sat astride a huge grey charger with a bent snout and feathery hooves, arrayed in a hauberk of mail and a surcoat and tabard of dull red and green, the color of damp forest earth and pine needles. A cuirass of gleaming steel formed a bodice around her waist and in place of a lance, she exchanged the worn and venerable bardiche from the Duke of Morrh’s armory for an ornate though no less practical elven design, the floral design of its curved blade terminating in a fearsome spike. Renadna recounted with some regret that she had lapsed into the misty dream-time of her battle fugues, and the red sap from much timber she had felled stained the blade of the Razor-woman of Morrh as they managed the chaos of the aftermath of Thaless’ war.   
The increasing traffic of trade caravans and other assorted merchants and travellers on the well-paved roads as well as the cries of seagulls overhead indicated the approach to Chiras Hook, and Sir Thaless’ train crested a large hill to behold the wide coastal valley that stretched to the horizon, almost every acre dedicated to the vast Imperial capital. Renadion had scarce ventured outside of his own valley, and was left dumbstruck trying to comprehend a conurbation that housed over three million souls, the monumental architecture of its palatial estates and government buildings clashing with the towers and spires of the guilds and the parks and suburbs surrounding residential and commercial blocks.  
The cheers from the multitude as they passed the towering gates into Chiras Hook were deafening. Thaless was in his element, and Nisaras blew kisses to the crowd. Ghee was caterwauling with such a beaming expression on his face that Renadna half-believed the roar was for him. Felashi’s look was grim; it was not hard for Renadna to appreciate her distaste for crowds. Indeed, after catching her feminized name and the macabre epithet of razor-woman on the lips of the adoring public for more than a few minutes, the jubilation of basking in fame quickly turned to chagrin, and she began to sympathize more acutely with Felashi’s commonly sour disposition. To her relief, the cries of the teeming throng were quieted when a tall dark-skinned man clothed in a simple white robe walked calmly down the brick-laid thoroughfare towards the marching horses of Sir Thaless’ train.   
“I have been awaiting your arrival for quite some time, Renadion,” Gaberroun spoke with a smile and a soothing tone.   
“Well met, Gaberroun my old friend!” Thaless shouted, the great canine cavalier leaping out of his saddle to shake the wizard’s hand.  
“The Emperor’s niece will find her escort to the palace in capable hands, good Thaless, but I gather the Woodsman and Oathkeeper have a great deal of questions.”  
Renadna and Felashi exchanged nervous glances. Felashi’s healed arm and Renadna’s identity were not common knowledge even amongst the gossiping travellers that had journeyed out of the Fannon.  
“Of course, your eminence,” Thaless bowed deeply.  
The little imp Ghee spoke up. “Oi, can I go with Thaless to the palace? I wanna listen to more of his old war stories and hang around the dog-girls.”  
“They’re called faoladhs, Ghee,” Renadna sighed.   
“Let the young goblin have his fun,” Gaberroun replied calmly. “We have much to talk about.”

Renadna and Felashi were led clinking and clanking in their armor up the spiral staircase to Gaberroun’s personal quarters at the top of the highest tower of the Mage’s Guild. The circular tiered interior was not ostentatious at all, but rather homely, warmly lit by candles and containing a vast library of texts along the walls. Gaberroun kindly beckoned them into a pair of cushioned chairs in front of a fireplace, and sat down in his own high-backed seat of ornately wrought oak, looking like nothing so much as the tree from which it was cut. They sat silently for a few moments, the wizard having picked up a small book from the stand next to his chair.  
Renadna, uncharacteristically, broke the silence. “I take it from your greeting in the square, you know who I am, and why I’m here.”  
“Yes,” the old wizard replied.  
Renadna sighed disconsolately. “I also take it then, that if you’re not already offering to change me back into a man, that there is no such spell, is there?”  
“Even if there were, I wouldn’t do it.”  
“What?” she asked incredulously.  
“Renadion, the unholy sorcery that cast you into that form could sunder reality and the entirety of creation itself, and is a power which no living thing should ever wield. I consider it an incalculable fortune that any of us on the planet are alive at all, most of all you. I have conveyed my uttermost gratitude for your sacrifice to the Emperor, and he most certainly would be ecstatic to see the person responsible for our continued existence. Besides,” Gaberroun laughed lightly, “I think you’ll agree there are worse ways to lose one’s manhood.”  
Felashi began barking that crude hoarse laugh from Morrh’s castle again. That caught Renadna’s attention and reminded her of something.  
“If sorcery is so bad, how come nothing happened when I healed Felashi’s hand? And where did this magic come from? I’ve been having these strange visions…”  
She stopped laughing immediately, and pouted with a look of shame on her face.  
“Healing is a difficult art, my son, but no more foul or unnatural than drawing the moisture out of the air or exciting the particles in the atmosphere to create bolts of electricity. You are swimming in the current of creation, not paddling against it. Life already existed in Felashi’s flesh; you merely corrected its course.” Gaberroun gazed intently at the she-orc. “You should be grateful for what Renadion did for you. He relieved a great burden from your soul. I know your pain Felashi. Your kin shall ever be mourned, but the torment of your grief damned you more profoundly than any vile wight of Zhadia’s. Unfettered by your bereavement you have been taught to love again.”  
“Love?” Renadna asked.  
“Of course. She loves you quite deeply.”  
The cheeks of the atypically silent orc flushed with pink as her eyes went wide. Renadna didn’t know that an orc even could blush. Felashi quickly changed the subject. “What of the Little Father’s newfound taste for battle? He was a but a peasant with an axe when I met him, now he cuts through trained soldiers like a scythe reaps wheat. He has saved my life in battle more than once,” she said fondly.  
Gaberroun glanced inquisitively at Renadna with those kind eyes, wordlessly beckoning her to explain.   
“I don’t know what happens. It’s like I go into a dream, but I’m not asleep. It’s sort of awkward to explain,” she said uncomfortably, “I see strange trees. They’re all shimmering in white outlines against a black nothingness, and I have an axe in my hand. You can guess what I do next. When I wake up, in place of the trees are people.”  
“I have heard of these battle fugues before,” Gaberroun said pensively. “Many of the green folk call it ‘berserk’, but few have engaged in it in recent centuries as they beat their swords into plowshares. I am almost surprised Felashi did not recognize it.”  
Felashi nodded, though was still puzzled. “I have gone berserk before, but I have never seen trees.”  
“Perhaps the singular nature of Zhadia’s dispatch had something to do with it,” Gaberroun chuckled. “The Creator has always had a sense of humor the rest of us periodically find in bad taste.”  
Renadna couldn’t help laughing either. “Is that why I was able to create those flowers?” she queried.  
“You did what?” Gaberroun gasped in horror.  
“When I was at Ghee’s parents’ farm, I absentmindedly grew a small patch of flowers in their garden. I didn’t remember who I was at that time, I just pointed at the ground and some roses sprung up. I didn’t think much of it at the time so I didn’t tell anyone about it. Come to think of it, it reminded me an awful lot of what Geth- Zhadia did when she tricked me.”  
Gaberroun’s voice took on a grave tone. “Renadion, you must never attempt such an endeavor again. To create life where there is none is the sole prerogative of the Creator. To usurp those powers damages reality just as much as summoning the Unreborn.”  
Renadna shuddered as she remembered the half-melted shades of corpses that harried the Vanguard that bleak night in the ruins of the Endless Groves. Gaberroun’s voice sank to a eerie whisper.  
“The Unreborn are no mere reanimated corpse shambling along like a puppet on a string, abominable as such sorceries are; they are an echo of flesh and spirit. The vile necromantic arts that usurp the act of creation and plunder Towerweald’s flock capture the soul before it passes into the world beyond and imparts to it the very essence of its existence. It is not undead, Renadion, it is unlife.”  
“Towerweald? I heard you mention his name before...well, before.”   
“Towerweald is not a him, nor is it a her. They sit astride the planes of existence, where such concerns have no meaning. They are the psychopomp of the Creator. It is Towerweald who tends the Endless Groves of Mellar-hone and guides the departed souls of the living to the great mystery beyond,” Gaberroun explained ominously. “Had Zhadia completed her dark ritual, she would have gained access to the engines of creation and woe befall mankind should the world beyond come under the power of one as evil as she. It was she who fomented the last war between orcs and men eight centuries ago, and who has sent reprisals against the orcs once in her thrall with her Unreborn, just as she extirpated the Briar-boar clan. Let us hope that the event which granted you life anew banished hers once and for all.”  
"Surely, though, there must be some means to change me back that do not involve tearing the fabric of reality apart!" Renadna protested. "It cannot be beyond possibility!"   
Gaberroun shrugged, "no, I suppose it isn't.” Renadna’s eyes perked up. The grandmaster tapped his chin in contemplation for a moment. “The chemical elixirs that induce biological reorientation are not unknown amongst the serpent-folk of the far south, or their myrmidont allies in the deserts of Kalexxand, who occasionally require gender alteration in their breeding practices as a form of population control. I’m certain I could obtain the ingredients given the time, as the intended effect is a rare though not altogether unheard-of pursuit amongst the people of the Empire, however it’s a very involved process and there’s no guarantee it would work on a magically-induced transformation.”  
“That’s something I guess,” Renadna sighed.   
One of Felashi’s eyebrows raised as she considered the implications of Gaberroun’s words, then drooped back down again when she remembered the reason for the woman’s quest. “I will pray for the swift return of the little father back to his wife and child, in all ways.”  
“Very good,” the kindly wizard beamed. “Now, the good knight Thaless has no doubt made arrangements with the emperor for a banquet in your honor in the coming days, and I suggest we find a suitable dressmaker for you two before the colorblind pooch has the chance to make any of his own suggestions.”

The opulent pavilion which served as a dining room for Emperor Heradisal IX Trevallion was bristling with the clamor of its magnificently attired guests; generals, scions of noble families, merchant kings, and senators. A gaunt, grey-haired herald announced the entrance of the elite guests that garnered the Emperor’s attention as they were ushered to their seats by servile attendants.  
“Sir Thaless Verset, Baron of Dolichor.” The burly faoladh, clad in a handsome blue doublet puffed and slashed at the sleeves to let his golden fur peek through for the attention of the ladies present, sauntered proudly to his seat. His exuberant wide stride was accompanied by masculine hurrahs of respect from the men.  
“Princess Nisaras of Vadnya, 37th niece and 4th cousin once removed of Emperor Heradisal IX Trevallion.” The raven-haired young woman, wearing a yellow dress and turban, sat rather self-importantly at the Emperor’s side.  
“Ghee the…goblin,” the herald declared skeptically as the diminutive green fellow clad in a fashionable grey coat and cravat was guided to a table of dwarves and fellow goblins and engaged them heartily in bawdy conversation.  
“Lady Felashi Burnt-hand,” the herald warbled nervously as the orc followed Sir Thaless brusquely. She wore fine, tight-fighting leather jerkin with sleeves conspicuously covering both her arms, and in the barest effort of trying to dress in formal attire for a woman, at least by orc standards, a red loincloth that extended to the toes of her fur boots and exposed almost all of her toned green legs. None present dared to chide the owner of the revealing outfit, but more than one lady slapped their partner for ogling the sight before him longer than was appropriate.  
With a swelling pride to his voice and enhanced vigor, the crier proclaimed, “Gaberroun the Great and Lady Renadna, the Razor-woman of Morrh.” The entire congregation, Emperor included, stood up and bowed. Renadna was clothed in a raiment of dull red and green, her light-brown hair neatly braided behind her scalp and draped over one shoulder. It was the first time she had worn a dress in over a year, and it took some convincing for the imperial tailors to permit her to wear thin breeches hidden under the dress. She cautiously surveyed the room with dread apprehension as the black-skinned wizard, garbed in his simple flawless white silk robe, tenderly held her hand to guide her to her seat beside him, in speaking distance of Emperor Trevallion.  
The Emperor himself was in his early middle-age, with the faintest traces of grey elegantly accentuating the jet-black hair of his fully-bearded yet somehow still boyish face. He wore a simple circlet of gold, and a red-and-blue banded cloak, and at his side always kept an ancient bronze sword as the symbol of his power; all others in his presence were not permitted weapons of any sort. Needless to say, Felashi fumed throughout the whole banquet. He smiled perpetually but hardly spoke.  
Renadna leaned closer to Gaberroun to whisper in his ear. “Thirty seventh niece?”  
“Oh yes,” he mentioned nonchalantly, “the Emperor’s family tree is quite large and convoluted. In fact, I asked Heradisal, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name or face, but we checked the official genealogical records and there she was. The Emperor can’t be bothered to keep track of every single relative that’s too far removed from the line of Imperial inheritance. That’s partly what the senate is for, gathering all the in-laws in one place so they can manage themselves.”  
The multi-course meal was predictably sumptuous, and Renadna could not identify half the things she ate. Most of the conversation was trite, some of it was bureaucratic and beyond her ken; Gaberroun helpfully interceded on her behalf whenever she floundered to the incessant obsequious questions that the assorted elect personages levelled at her about her exploits in the Fannon. More than one nobleman – some young and handsome, others considerably less so – made overtures to her, and it was a substantial effort persuade them that she could not dance.  
“Is it true that this shrinking violet and her small green ward assailed the Castle Morrh nigh singlehandedly, rescued my finest paladins, and returned to me one of my inestimable and innumerable relatives as well?” the Emperor suddenly asked jovially of Thaless and his niece, clearly indicating Renadna.  
Felashi, brow furrowed, let out a single deadpan “what” at Sir Thaless, while Renadna blushed furiously.  
“I may have embellished a few details my liege, but let me assure you that the martial valor of my companions knows no equal,” the faoladh said without a hint of embarrassment or guilt.  
“The honorable sir knight exaggerates the abilities of my saviors out of modesty, I’m sure,” Nisaras snidely commented, “but I assure you uncle, the courteous maid before you is a valiant warrior whose common blood belies a noble heart. Surely,” she sighed with affected regret, “were she a man I should be honored to wed her at once.”   
Renadna gulped audibly. Did Nisaras know something? Renadna, Felashi, and Thaless had agreed to keep her identity between them before entering Chiras Hook. Perhaps Ghee’s big mouth had let it slip to her.  
“Well,” the Emperor chuckled softly, “that being out of the question, how do you feel I should reward the young lady for the service she did to the crown?”  
“The Duchy of Morrh has chafed too long, and could use a finer, gentler touch,” Thaless suggested.  
“There are many fine young gentlemen in the Senate uncle, should she consent the union between a Senator’s son and Renadna would mend the fractious relations of Morrh once she is elevated to Duchess,” Nisaras said to the interested murmurs of many of the unaccompanied male attendees.  
Renadna’s eyes went wide with shock. “No!” she shouted, jumping to her feet. Gaberroun softly pulled her back down into her seat. The guests stared at her monumental breach of decorum, but the Emperor’s cheerful expression did not change. “I mean uh…” she stammered artlessly. She tugged on Gaberroun’s sleeve, whispering “help me.”  
“Does the young lady perhaps not care for the affections of men?” a pompous count snickered several seats down the table, starting murmurs of gossip amongst the women. The Emperor’s face flashed a glare of displeasure for a moment and the chatter ceased.  
Gaberroun stood from the table and strode to the Emperor’s side, leaning down to whisper in his ear. He rose to his feet, bowed to his guests, and summoned the group with him to his private quarters. He sat down at a large granite desk, covered with stacks of paper. He sat silently for a moment then said, “Well? I’m waiting. Gaberroun said you had a very good reason why you couldn’t possibly marry any of my inestimable and innumerable relatives.”  
Gaberroun nodded. “Go ahead, Renadion.”  
Renadna explained at length the events that precluded relations with the male sex.  
“Is it true, Gaberroun?” the Emperor asked.  
“Yes, I can testify with the conviction of the Creator himself that this woman before you used to be a man.”  
Trevallion laughed. “No, I’ve seen enough of your magic to believe anything. I meant was this the same peasant farmer who accompanied my vanguard into Mellar-hone and sacrificed his life to banish Zhadia?”  
“Woodsman,” Renadna corrected timidly. The mage nodded at the Emperor.  
“Well, the world owes you a depth of gratitude, Renadion. And I don’t think you should be ashamed of that name. I certainly will not hide your identity from the due recognition it deserves. Goodness knows, half of my subjects will probably find it a trifle romantic. If indeed you desire to cross the sea to Mellar-hone, my best ships will speed you there whenever you wish to leave Hallth. Should you ever change your mind, the Duchy of Morrh will await your stewardship.”

It was late in the evening when Emperor Trevallion finally permitted his exalted guests to return to their luxuriously appointed chambers. Renadna had discarded her extravagant gown and resumed her simple nightshirt and loose breeches as she secured the travelling trunks holding her armor and prepared for bed. She made sure that Ghee was safely tucked in and well out of trouble before setting herself down at the edge of the bed. Just then, Felashi entered from the adjoining room and strode brusquely to the same side of the bed where Renadna was sitting and began removing her clothes.  
“Wh-what are you doing,” the brown-haired woman asked.  
“I have seen the way you look at me,” the orc said matter-of-factly. “At my body. At night. There is nothing wrong with it,” she waved away when she saw the human blush.  
“Felashi, you’re a very beautiful woman,” Renadna stammered chastely, “but I am a married man – uh, well not right now – I mean – you know what I mean.”  
“No, I do not,” Felashi bluntly claimed.  
“Humans are…well, most of them…are, you know, exclusive.”  
“I know what marriage is. I have trod the kingdoms of men for decades. I am not stupid.”  
“Felashi, I can’t. I know things have changed, but I still love my wife. I can’t betray the vows I made to her. I have to let her know I’m still alive at least, even if we can’t…be the way we were.” Renadna suddenly remembered the obvious. “Besides, I’m a woman! That’s not…right.”  
“Green folk take pleasure whenever they please. Man or woman, it does not matter. But that is not love. We save love only for the bearer of our children…or one who we would want to bear our children,” she said, leaving the idea hanging forlornly in the air. “When you were a man you never pleasured yourself?”  
“Well, yeah,” Renadna said sheepishly, not comfortable admitting it.  
“Was that being disloyal to your wife?”  
“Well no, but-“  
“It is the same woman to woman or man to man. Nothing more, nothing less.” There was a pregnant pause. “How do you know she has not found someone to comfort her in your absence?”  
Renadna stared at her briefly, then with a look of sudden realization started laughing. “Of course! How could I have been so blind?”  
“What’s the matter,” Felashi asked, curious as the abrupt change in mood.  
“Bart the Blacksmith! Right before I left that night, I was deathly afraid. I swore to myself up and down that I wouldn’t be coming back. I was being ridiculously melodramatic. I told Arinea that if anything happened, she should marry Bart. My God, it’s been over five years, of course she has. How stupid I’ve been. If Gaberroun’s right and I can’t return to my old body…I can’t force her to do that. But I can’t just leave them thinking I died, especially my son. Maybe…maybe I can become an aunt or something. I still have to see them again, Felashi.”  
“Does this mean you want me to go back to my own bed, Renadion,” she said.  
Renadna thought about that. Felashi was right. It would have been utterly unfair for him to expect Arinea to sacrifice her own needs for loyalty to a husband she thought was dead, and to come barging back in years later demanding her attention again in a form she was totally unprepared for and very likely not attracted to. And it would be just as unfair for Arinea to expect Renadion to remain just as chaste in his bodily condition. It was simply too much to ask from either of them.  
“No,” she said softly, putting her hand on Felashi’s. “I want you to stay.”   
Once again Renadna saw that most rare and exquisite of blossoms: a smile upon the face of the mournful orc mistress of the lost clan of the Briar-boars.  
Slowly, tentatively, the green woman leaned forward to kiss Renadna softly on the lips. Her tusks scratched gently against Ren’s lips, but did not hurt; evidently, she was no stranger to kissing women. One of Felashi’s strong hands began caressing the inside of Ren’s thighs, causing her to jump.  
“Uhhh,” she said nervously, “let’s take it slow. I’ve never done this before. Well, not as a woman. Maybe…uhhh…you can start with my…uh…chest?”  
“Good idea. Take off your shirt. I admire a good pair of breasts,” the orc said bluntly.   
She lifted the tunic off of Ren’s outstretched arms, letting the large drooping globes of her pale breasts hang free for a moment, before tenderly leaning her back onto the pillow, causing the weighty twin moons to stretch slightly to the sides. Renadna had tested the weight of her mammaries before of course, if only for the novelty of confirming that they were real, but in her mind she was still Renadion of Ardenvale and had hitherto done her best to ignore the accoutrements of her new sex. But the sensuous warmth of Felashi’s strong hands squeezing and massaging the soft jiggling flesh was irresistible, and Ren exhaled vigorously to suppress a moan when the she-orc traced her tongue up along the underside of one tit and clasped her lips upon the turgid pink nub that capped Ren’s heaving bosom. One of Felashi’s muscular legs slipped between her own, rubbing against her cleft and sending a jolt of arousal through her loins.   
“Wait a minute, uh…” Renadna stalled, putting off the inevitable. Felashi looked sultrily up from the steady suction of her lips against the squishy boob. “C-could I…play with yours?”  
Wordlessly, Felashi rolled over in anticipation. Renadna sat on top of her, straddling the orc’s waist and massaging her green boobies. They were about the same size as hers, with greyish-pink nipples, but on her much larger and muscular frame, they appeared proportionally no larger than Arinea’s. Felashi made no effort to hide her enjoyment as Renadna suckled on them with the greediness of a hungry babe, her deep purrs of pleasure causing the human to scan the room in shameful fear of hidden voyeurs.   
“The doors are locked. Stop worrying,” Felashi said between moans. She took Renadna’s hand in hers and pulled it down across her taut stomach, caressing the rippling abs while she continued nursing. Renadna’s hand wandered further south without Felashi’s guidance, brushing against the soft black down that framed the orc-woman’s puffy lower lips, hints of the same greyish-pink peeking out of her folds. Unbidden, Renadna removed her mouth’s lock from the green teat and began kissing her way down the she-orc’s hard tummy until she reached her flowery target.  
Renadion had only done this with his wife a few times, and while the experience was not unpleasant, Renadna did not consider herself very good at it. The meatiness of Felashi’s vulva lent itself well towards the playful maneuvering of her lips and tongue though, and the she-orc’s pleasure nub was large and obvious, demanding attention. If she remembered right, all she had to do was flick her tongue under that and –  
“URRGH…AAAAGH!” Felashi bellowed deeply, bucking her muff into Renadna’s face, careful to avoid clenching her thighs together. She began purring again, the furrowed brow of her closed eyes casting a curiously angry expression as she breathed rapidly, before calming down and curling her lips in a smile. “Good…now…your turn.”  
“No!” Renadna yelped. “Uh, I mean, no thank you. The tusks.”  
“Oh. You’re right. Never been with human women before. Makes sense they’re more delicate than green women. Fingers then.”  
There was no escaping it now. Renadna lied back where she was earlier and steeled herself. Felashi’s calloused hands were gentle as they stroked the entire length of Ren’s body, up and down her firm thighs and ribs and abdomen.   
The orcess noticed her concern and tried to allay the human’s fears. “Everyone is frightened on their first. This is your first as a woman. I won’t put any fingers in unless you tell me too.”  
Renadna nodded in assent. When Felashi began to rub against her mound it was like lightning; she had tried so hard the past year to avoid agitating her ladyhood she was unprepared for the jolts of pleasure that shot through her body, and her male mind was simply not up to the task of responding rationally to those foreign sensations. She felt lightheaded, and her climax overtook her so completely she blacked out for a moment, unable to register quite what had happened.  
“Good, yes?”  
“Uuuuhhhhhh,” Ren groaned out weakly, nodding.  
“I told you there was nothing to be afraid of. Do you want it again?”  
Renadna considered her earlier offer. “Okay,” she exhaled resolutely, “I think I’m ready for more. You can put one in.”  
She could not help but let loose a tiny falsetto squeal at the utterly bizarre sense of penetration which stood against every single preconception of what sex meant to Renadion. Rubbing was one thing, and was fairly easy to correlate with her previous experience, but this was something else. Yet the pleasure was as inescapable as it was undeniable, and before long, she was bucking against Felashi’s furiously working fingers, three buried deep inside her. When she came again, she thanked the creator that she saw stars and not trees.  
An hour later, the two women lie sweating silently on the bed, their legs locked in the throes of tribadist ecstacy. Renadna was panting heavily, her breathing slow and forceful. She tried to whistle and her tired lips failed in the attempt. Felashi seemed hardly the worse for wear but bore a look of contentment.  
“Well ladies,” a familiar tinny voice rang, “when’s my turn?”  
Renadna nearly fell off the bed in terror, diving into the sheets and clutching them to her chest at the sound of the intruder, none other than Ghee – standing buck naked and at attention.   
“How’d you get in here,” she cried furiously. “Get out! That’s disgusting!”  
“Came in through Felashi’s room. Cammon, it’s nothing we’ve ain’t all seen before, just different sizes is all.”  
Felashi looked prospectively at the young male goblin. She licked her lips. “Your small friend is more handsome than I expected once he’s had a bath and gotten his clothes off.”  
Renadna turned to her with a look of horror on her face. “You’re not seriously considering-“  
“I can take him in the other room if you like. When I am through he won’t bother us for a few days. I can come back in an hour if you like.”  
“Ugghhh. Go ahead.”   
“Alroight! An even taller lady! Wait til I tell dad!”  
It was midnight when Felashi returned. The Razor-woman of Morrh was fast asleep. The orcess slipped under the covers and wrapped her arms around the tender creature she knew as the boyish youth she met years ago in Ardenvale.


	4. Chapter 4

Currently fleshing out the story beyond outline status. Stay tuned - update imminent.


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